Date: 2008
Website: http://www.walkerstalker.com/
Rating: ★★★☆☆
Logline: A young commuter starts to receive unsettling text messages from an unknown source.
I came across this short while browsing on Filmgen.com which is another place you can go to view shorts online. They only had one film in their horror category and this was it. Horror is a weird genre. You have to wonder what makes us enjoy watching them then avoid answering that question by asking what kind of sick nutter likes to make them? So what was the filmmakers of this short trying to achieve?
We've got a woman in a train, "Cinderella", played by Rae Hendrie. She starts to get videos of herself sent to her mobile from an unknown person who seems to be very close by. At first she just casually dismisses the message. (an odd reaction to realising someone is filming you) A few messages more and she's running through the dark streets and into a phone booth. (odd again, she's already got a phone) It's not long before she's stumbled into someones fist and comes to a grizzly demise.
It's not scary. I found it pretty hysterical in parts but that could be attributed to my own sick mind. The cliched fleeing woman who trips over thin air and loses a shoe is particularly funny as is the threatening texts written in chat abbreviations such as "i lik U". Cinderella also has time to text a reply to her stalker (with intermittent capital letters?) rather than dial 999. All errors from a poorly constructed plot.
Hendrie's acting is done well. I haven't seen her in anything since her lead role as Annie in my high school musical (The spookiest thing about this film is that I recognise her from being in the year above me) Thankfully, there aren't any lines of dialogue in this piece which works for it not against it. She does do a good blood curdling scream at the end too. I did frown a bit at the frightened white girl trapped in a phone booth surrounded by black hoodlums scene but didn't dwell on its possible connotations.
The cheesy soundtrack is a little off putting but the handheld camerawork contributes to the mood of the film and although there is good pacing, structure, and feels about the right length, there isn't enough time to build up a satisfying feeling of suspense, fear or tension. In fact, we're all just glad to see her get it in the end.
To answer the question regarding what the filmmakers were trying to achieve we should look at the bigger picture. The film seems to be one in a series of shorts (or mobisodes) featuring different victims of the walker stalker. Check out their interactive website to view more. I like this idea a lot and am a big fan of this type of marketing and promotion by filmmakers. Cinderella is weak on its own but stands stronger as part of a series. A series I would like to see continue and build.
Best Bit: Eating her own words literally. Okay mobile, same thing.
We've got a woman in a train, "Cinderella", played by Rae Hendrie. She starts to get videos of herself sent to her mobile from an unknown person who seems to be very close by. At first she just casually dismisses the message. (an odd reaction to realising someone is filming you) A few messages more and she's running through the dark streets and into a phone booth. (odd again, she's already got a phone) It's not long before she's stumbled into someones fist and comes to a grizzly demise.
It's not scary. I found it pretty hysterical in parts but that could be attributed to my own sick mind. The cliched fleeing woman who trips over thin air and loses a shoe is particularly funny as is the threatening texts written in chat abbreviations such as "i lik U". Cinderella also has time to text a reply to her stalker (with intermittent capital letters?) rather than dial 999. All errors from a poorly constructed plot.
Hendrie's acting is done well. I haven't seen her in anything since her lead role as Annie in my high school musical (The spookiest thing about this film is that I recognise her from being in the year above me) Thankfully, there aren't any lines of dialogue in this piece which works for it not against it. She does do a good blood curdling scream at the end too. I did frown a bit at the frightened white girl trapped in a phone booth surrounded by black hoodlums scene but didn't dwell on its possible connotations.
The cheesy soundtrack is a little off putting but the handheld camerawork contributes to the mood of the film and although there is good pacing, structure, and feels about the right length, there isn't enough time to build up a satisfying feeling of suspense, fear or tension. In fact, we're all just glad to see her get it in the end.
To answer the question regarding what the filmmakers were trying to achieve we should look at the bigger picture. The film seems to be one in a series of shorts (or mobisodes) featuring different victims of the walker stalker. Check out their interactive website to view more. I like this idea a lot and am a big fan of this type of marketing and promotion by filmmakers. Cinderella is weak on its own but stands stronger as part of a series. A series I would like to see continue and build.
Best Bit: Eating her own words literally. Okay mobile, same thing.
Worst Bit: Oh God, your shoe came off, please!
Final thought: That's an awful lot of scrapes she's got on her face after one punch.
Read a condensed review of this film on Twitter here.
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